By Khiem Dinh, photos by Jeff Naeyaert
The Honda S2000 or S2K as it is affectionately known is one of our favorite cars from one of our favorite brands, Honda. Its most endearing feature is its front engine rear drive chassis with a front mid engine configuration giving an ideal 50/50 weight distribution. Although the S2K has a bad reputation as being a twitchy, hard to handle car, we have found, that with the proper modifications, it is just the opposite, a sweetheart that is easy for a reasonably skilled driver to flat out haul ass in that is nearly impossible to make understeer.
By Mike Kojima
Compared to the late great SR engine family, the early Nissan QR25DE has a spotted history as a performance engine. In the performance world it has earned a reputation for being fragile and the many recalls that Nissan has had for serious problems from blowing head gaskets to blowing rods out the side of the block has furthered this reputation. The engine's redeeming features are a cylinder head that flows extremely well, a light overall weight and a strongly supported crank and lower end. A fragile engine is not going to work for our time attack Spec-V so we are going to address the engine’s weak points and see if we can turn the QR into a solid performer capable of racing levels of performance and reliability.
Since we are all about worry free towing, we decided to look into getting a new full size truck. Over the years we have used about every truck on the market including the Dodge Ram and Ford F250 SD (which was our current favorite truck). Dan Gardner, owner of our Project Scion racecar was awfully impressed with the Tundra he received on long-term loan from Toyota and recommended we give one a try.
In our last edition of Project SR50, we had reached the limits of simple bolt on modifications which left us with a nicely running Scooter, capable of just over 50 mph with acceleration good enough to keep up with traffic and 115 mpg. With more time, we are really taking a liking to the refined Aprilia SR50, which rides, handles and brakes better than any scooter in this displacement category. We also like its sporty looks. The SR50 is the king of urban commuter scooters and we are going to take it to the next level.
See Part 1 Here!
By Mari Umekubo
In our previous installments of Project Pathfinder we corrected the sloppy handling and loose steering of our machine. Our project is handling superbly, more like a sports sedan than an SUV. Our next mod is one more for convenience than adding any additional performance.
After Technosquare was done fabricating our cage we proceeded to paint the cage for corrosion resistance and a finished look.
For racing, adjustable swaybars are important because adjusting the stiffness of the front or rear bars helps adjust the amount of under or oversteer a car will exhibit under hard cornering. Adjustable bars are critical as they can be adjusted at the track much faster than changing springs or other ways of altering roll stiffness to change the understeer to oversteer ratio when tuning the suspension to suit the situation.
Follow Project Spec-V Here!
MotoIQ Staff Report
The Scion road racing team added another highlight to their 2009 season with yet another championship. The six-hour win at Thunderhill clinched the season championship for the Western Endurance Racing Championship (WERC) series. The team won every race, save one, en route to the E1 class victory, for a near perfect record…impressive, especially in an endurance format series. The team also accrued more points (585) than any other team in any class in the series. The Scion tC race car was completely bulletproof even with the engine spinning 5,000 to 7,500 rpm for three to six hours straight.
By Jeff Naeyaert
In our last installment of Project Ruckus we got our super motor tuned and running well, however although our acceleration was vastly improved, we did not see much of an improvement in top speed, only gaining about 3 mph before hitting the 10.500 rpm rev limit. To make matters worse, our Ruckus is now always topped out on the rev limiter. Doubling our power has enabled our bike to zoom right on up to its top speed but once that speed is reached, the engine is screaming at 10,500 rpm continuously. This probably is not the best bet for long life!
Read the Series Here!
By Sarah Forst
If bling isn’t your thing, you can skip some of the pretty stuff and save about $600 but to get to the 50mph, open your wallet. READ ON...
Got a Tech Question? Email Sarah at asksarah@motoiq.com
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